In future updates, you will not have to choose a path and stick with it. Players initially dating someone can break up with them, though the story will always continue until it reaches a conclusion. You won’t be able to see everything using a single save slot, but you can depending on where you save using multiple slots.
There’s a hidden point system for Grace, Rea, and Hannah. One of my mistakes with the intro was making some of the choices that affects this obtuse. For example, you get Rea/Hannah points if you decline Grace’s drink offer (as Alex might, Grace can act a little sus sometimes). I would go back through the demo and try making different choices, and saving when choice menus pop up.
If you really can’t unlock new scenes after Grace’s, then that’s a new bug and I need to fix it
Nope, it’s a real desktop pc. Although it has only 8gb of ram and it’s the only windows pc I currently have. I do have a linux desktop with more ram but getting anything not found on packet center to work well with itis usually a pain and so I haven’t tried the linux edition of forks.
That’s understandable i recall that in the first demo i played with how many choices their were and i thought you would still do it to the limited degree you kept typing about, also kind of figure that specific route would be Graces route in some way or Rea.
Though i kinda of mentally picture what would happen that early on if Alex did get to her forth weight stage if she got that big early on,
Not able to fit into her Swimsuit so unable to play Volleyball with the other girls
maybe not only grace but one of the other girls catch her night snacking (Kinda wished it showed Grace peaking out of her room that night)
Hannah perhaps actually catching on that Alex in Intentionally putting on weight considering how much bigger she has gotten because she accepted the box from morgan and if you chosen her route brings it up giving you the option to tell her the truth or not
Rea steaming fans upsetting her more to the point she promptly shuts the stream down and calms alex down and perhaps later on durring spring break rea making a comment about it to which alex can reply with a small truth to her and reas weight situation or not
Grace seeing her forth weight stage is impressed with alexes progress and getting a more open response from to which Grace asks alex if she would like help with the changes she’s going through and alex will respond she will answer her at a later date (Due to her relationship and current weight) to which changes some scenes during the spring break, Grace actually comes out and not only joins in her night raid on the fridge but encourages her to eat more than alex has planned which leads to the next morning with Hannah perhaps having a argument with Rea about who ate out a good amount of the fridge after they let alex wake up, upon which Hannah does accuse alex at one point but grace calls you over to get you out of that situation and then either during the shower scene (With the burger scene going mostly the same way as before but Grace remarks that alex is really embracing her changes) that Alex responds to graces assistance with a yes as she they discuss mostly the same thing but perhaps alex weight number goal is higher and fat alex in the dream is even larger than before.
Looks at the reply i made K i’ll stop now before i- ack who am i kidding Graces example is proof enough i went into alot of detail of weight stage four for the intro part of forks…
Considering how so much thought and time has been invested into this project, it seemed inconsiderate to simply play through the demo without then providing some constructive feedback in return.
The Artwork
While I was initially skeptical that the change in art style was the best direction to take the game in, I’ve definitely come to appreciate it now. The characters look great and there are some truly wonderful backgrounds, particularly that of Alex’s house by the lake. The subtle changes in how Alex’s clothes fit and shift to accommodate her growing body makes for fun comparisons. As someone with a weakness for plump faces, I really enjoyed seeing Alex’s round out. There’s nothing cuter than chubby cheeks. That’s something often overlooked in weight gain media, so I’m glad you have embraced it.
The Music
I tend not to pay as much attention to a game’s soundtrack as much as it probably deserves, but there are some genuinely catchy tracks included in the demo. Some were perhaps a bit too loud at times, but that can easily be resolved by adjusting the settings. All together, the music really enhances the playthrough, I thought.
The UI
It’s minimalistic and sleek, and the pastel colors are pleasant to the eye. Your choice to have multiple dialogue boxes displayed on screen at the same time so as to represent streams of thought and background conversations was a good one. It’s innovative. I’ve certainly not seen it done before. It grants insight into how characters converse and interact with each other when not presently engaging with Alex. After all, people have different social selves, different ways in which we behave dependent on the setting we’re in and the individuals we’re interacting with, so I think this feature can offer a lot in the way of character development. The inclusion of a phone is another neat feature that I enjoy. Being able to visually see Alex’s weight spiking and how far she’s come via the graph is far more interesting than simply seeing a number. It really emphasizes just how drastic her weight gain is. A notes section containing key details about the major characters seems like it will be especially helpful during a long playthrough of the game. As others have suggested, I believe a journal section where Alex can record her Caketime thoughts, as well as document what she might have eaten, weight gain milestones, and fatty experiences would be a welcome addition, especially given the time jumps that occur. This would help flesh out her weight gain journey on a more intimate level. Of course, not every day would need a journal entry, and they could be as brief as something like, “Popped my shorts button while eating lunch with Hannah today. Being the polite person that she is, she pretended not to notice, but I could tell she was as embarrassed as I was,” or just a list of what she ate that day to show how her appetite is growing.
The Writing
By and large, the writing is quite well done. It’s entertaining for the most part and each of the characters have their own unique voice that sets them apart. Grace is definitely my favorite of the bunch. There’s this air of mystery and regalness that surrounds her, and I like how blunt but well-meaning she can be. Of course, her project to get people to become fat positive and give in to gluttony is incredibly attractive. Alex is my second favorite because I enjoy her quirkiness, which comes out most often in her thought bubbles. I like how despite being a lifelong feedee and wanting to be fat more than anything, she’s still a bit afraid, unsure, and insecure as to whether she should actually follow through and make her dream a reality. It’s the sort of internal tug of war that so many feedees struggle with on a daily basis. While Morgan doesn’t have as big of a presence in the story as the other characters, I think she plays an important role in guiding Alex on her journey, helping her become less insecure about her growth. She’s that motherly friend people can’t help but turn to whenever they need advice. I don’t have much to say about Hannah because I don’t think there was a moment where her character got to really shine, but this is more subjective. I must admit that I’m not much of a fan of Rea. I find her abrasive, which to be fair, seems to be inline with her character. While I do think the scenes with the professor were on the longer side, I found them entertaining nonetheless. This is a novel, so I’m okay with not every scene needing to be weight-gain oriented. Unlike some others, I don’t have much issue with Ryan as a character since he serves the role of a close confidant for Alex, nor do I have an issue with the prologue in general. Nevertheless, I do feel that Alex and her gaining journey needs to be featured more prominently, which the addition of the journal could help accomplish. I also think there are some pacing issues, and this stems primarily from time jumping and how quickly Alex is gaining weight. But, the scene where Alex converses with a future, fatter version of herself deserves a gold star. It blends character growth and offers a deeper dive into her psychology while still exploring the subject of weight gain.
Player Choice
Couldn’t have said it better myself. This pretty much sums up my thinking on the matter. There doesn’t need to be a system where I can just choose to eat whenever I want, with repeatable stuffing scenes or what not, as some have seemed to suggest. I don’t think that’s necessary. Having this be a story on rails where I can make a choice to shift onto different tracks every now and again seems optimal.
Closing Thoughts
There’s far more I’d like to say, but for now, I’ll just say thank you. Tron and the rest of the team, you’ve done a spectacular job. I’m very impressed with the quality of content you’ve put together, and I can’t be more excited for the game’s final release.
Heh, I did notice while looking at the (surprisingly unencrypted) game files that the whole damn script is in a single file right now. It’s definitely possible to split that up to make it less of a nightmare to write and edit. Might do a mockup of that actually, if it might help.
Re; my comments regarding Ryan before, I definitely think his existence in the game isn’t super problematic to the point of removal. His conversations aren’t good for a cold opening but they can be useful as a way to avoid having the game start in high school, lol. Some of your ideas sound like they’d work though, something like;
Open the game with Alex arriving at College for the first time, with short cg-spliced scenes (montage?) covering her initial reactions and snippets of her life that track her experiences before the game start.
Focus on moments that explain Alex’s background, mindset and core traits - like photos of Alex playing soccer, her anime phase and the divide in body image compared to her parents, etc so that we have a frame of reference when these show up later in the story.
The reader shouldn’t feel surprised by Alex’s actions and priming us for these topics to re-emerge greatly enhances immersion. Ryan is still good at giving an idea of how she socialises with people, the sort of people she trusts and (as many have noted) avoiding long dream sequences or blocks of navel-gazing.
I think the existing conversation (but split in two) would be a good bookend for that kind of sequence: one chat on day 1 discussing her hopes/dreams/fears (and the reason for his absence) and the next at the start of the semester, questioning what has changed and what hasn’t (for better and/or worse) and how Alex might respond to that over the next semester.
As for ‘if we had more options, everyone would just pick the fat one’, I’m sorta eh on this. Some readers might have body preferences that skew towards a different character and would prefer Alex gaining slower if that means their fav blimps up rapidly (since body types are effectively locked, this becomes a more significant factor). Some might have an upper bound on their preferences that leads to Alex having a plateau or prefer bloating fetish content to wg content. Some might want to play Alex as becoming a feeder more than a feedee that embraces the impact she begins to have on others. Personally, I like picking choices that fit my perception of who Alex is before later looking for a ‘100% run’ or the like. The more choices there are that ‘make sense’ for her, the better, even if they aren’t all ‘pres buten receev fett’.
Right now, that generally aligns with all the fat options, but primarily because I think it’d fit with my headcanon of Alex going ‘too far’ to indulge her fetish early (due to inexperience/curiosity) and seeing rapid results that slow down as she realises the extremes have downsides. It’s a common IRL trend if my 10+ years of community lurking is any indication (remember yahoo groups?).
I still kinda feel the level 1 Alex looks fatter than the stated start weight (mainly due to Dat Ass lol) and leads to Alex’s time as ‘the token skinny girl’ being very, very shortlived but it’s a nitpick. I think there’s few enough CG right now in the very early game for it to be changed (or room for some CG to be reused later, like the cafe pants scene) but it’s a preference - not a dealbreaker by any stretch lol.
I can’t financially contribute to this right now, partly due to circumstance and partly due to its current development, but if this project delivers I would totally pay something like 15-20 $, not even joking. I love the artist you got onboard for this, and will watch this with a great deal of anticipation. Always wanted to see more WG VN’s of this quality in english. Thanks for this. I hope you guys make it to a full release!
Considering I tried most dialog-choice combinations so far I’d love having even more of them available, even minor ones. Especially some that change your weight or at least give you some agency. I can guarantee I’d try them all, some might lead to interesting scenes or a late butterfly-effect after all.
I wonder if it would be possible to have the CG’s use background and sprites to archive a modular effect? I can only speculate, but currently it would seem possible.
Ren’py has various memory limits, like by default the image cache is 300mb. Point being i think you may have run into a programed limit of some nature. I don’t have half a clue of how most of Ren’pys rendering system and memory management work all i know is, your system having available memory is only half the fight. I suspect garbage collection or how renpy manages the caches may be to blame for this.
@Tron if your interested in checking if Forks comes anywhere close to saturating the image cache its in the debug tools, use shift+D while playing, launching from the dev kit and use the image load log.
Man, sometimes you guys make replying feel like a full time job ! Thanks as always for the support!
Special thanks to @cheddar, @LisaPage, and @ChairInTheRoom for the in-depth reviews. I really, really appreciate you all taking the time to be so helpful, and it’s because of all of your advice that I think I have a way to adjust parts of the intro to address your points. It’s an angle I haven’t tried yet, explains why Alex is gaining now, and provides some needed foreshadowing for a certain character’s route. Something that breaks up the initial Ryan chat and makes it work smarter, rather than longer. All without using new assets, because Toro is swamped right now.
It sounds so good when I haven’t written it yet . I’ll see if I can tie it into the next content update, which is probably when I’ll push out the bugfixes I’ve made too.
@Aleece You’re right! That’ll be fixed in the next release, everything but some of the phone notes should be in metric!
@Grizz and @dj_sharp Thanks! You should both have your chances someday for variety
@zdeerzzz I forgot all about that image cache cap. I’ve seen it spike up to 280 MB, but I’ve never seen it run out of memory. I could potentially reduce the rendering resolution from 4k to 2k. Has anyone else had this issue? Looks like the image cache is actually 600 MB too, I wonder what caused that?
Ah, and @cheddar, I actually forgot to encrypt the files, but I had just enough foresight to remove the data that isn’t used in the demo. Thank goodness! Tenacious players will find a way to decrypt it, but I probably will do so next time. As far as the script goes, I’ve actually looked at it for so long that I’ve memorized where everything is! If we had additional writers we’d definitely break it up; I found I best kept up with the linear narrative when it was stored in a single linear file.
And if you’re curious, I can remember reading Flying Suit Reiko when I was way too young for its boobs and 90s’ references.
@LisaPage Thank you for mentioning the music too, Ars has a lot of love for Forks’s sound and it’ll make his day to know people enjoyed it!
You can change the cache size with a line in the script, I forgot what it was but you should be able to find it in the ren’py documentation on its website. Of memory serves me correctly I recall reading that to big is a problem just like to small which is why it’s small to begin with. I’d try bumping it a little bit. I’d assume the spike is new images loading before the old are gotten rid of. Renpy is a single threaded application due to being written in python and pythons global interpreter lock.
Good to hear. In terms of the specific things I mentioned, you shouldn’t need new art for it. Like I said before, it’s all about just adding a bit more flesh on what’s there. I don’t imagine Toro needing to do any extra art for it.
I just got that one today. It’s the Spring Break image for Grace. You basically just have to do everything with her/choose the best option when talking to her the whole way through.
Yes it always happens when the game has to load new background. Forks seems to use around 1gb of ram says windows resource management. Sometimes it drops somewhere around 800mb but after that it slowly creeps back up to around 1024-1080mb as you play on. Closing the game and restarting it helps pass the point where the game crashed earlier. Could this be windows 7 related problem. I don’t know how many else is still playing with that.
Since Grace is best girl, I just had to create this little before and after comparison of Grace as she appears in the demo and the far fatter version of her, which Tron revealed back in April. I don’t believe this is a spoiler for that very reason, but I’ve blurred the image for those who might say otherwise.
It’s clear that she takes her gaining very seriously…
Grace’s winter outfit at that size is one of my favorites in the game, it’s like something out of a late 80s’ chic business wear catalog. Toro made sure Grace has class, and did such a great job giving everyone their own design language. Grace has three unique wardrobes, and he designed them all!
Hopefully I can let everyone see them at some point
! Thanks as always for the support!
. I’ll see if I can tie it into the next content update, which is probably when I’ll push out the bugfixes I’ve made too.
